1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns an electrical contact for a multicontact connector and a connector comprising such electrical contacts.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The multicontact connectors currently used and commercially distributed usually comprise, as shown in longitudinal cross-section in FIG. 1, a male part denoted A and a female part denoted B, the male and female contacts being disposed in respective insulative blocks 100A, 100B held in the male and female connector bodies. The connector shown in FIG. 1 is a round connector meeting the American specification MIL C 482 G.
To secure mechanical retention of the contacts in passageways 4 for them formed in the insulative blocks it is necessary to provide a fixing system comprising for each contact a locking clip 42 consisting of a spring metal tab. In order to lock each contact by means of the clip, the housing 4 must necessarily have an appropriate profile as seen in cross-section, as shown in FIG. 1, so as to provide in a chamber shoulders or wedging the corresponding clip and/or the contact against the latter.
This highly specific profile of each passageway at the level of the chamber results in a significant increase in the diameter of the passageway at this level, the effect of which is to limit the number of contacts for a given type of connector determined in particular by the minimal distance needed between two adjacent electrical contacts to obtain the required electrical isolation properties. Also, because of the complex profile of each passageway as previously described, insulative blocks provided with their housings being obtained by molding an electrically insulative plastics material, the molding can only be carried out in molds comprising molding pins to which are attached chemically degradable members having the exact dimensions of the required profile. The plastics material in liquid or paste form having flowed into the mold fitted with the previously described pins, after cooling and solidification of the insulative block it is then necessary to attack by chemical means the members attached to each molding pin in order to be able to release the insulative block from the mold and so recover the latter.
Although satisfactory, this procedure entails a large number of operational phases which are time-consuming and therefore costly. Also, because of the difficulty in ensuring that each attached member is chemically attacked in precisely the same way during the same operational period, the degradation of these parts may be more or less perfect, depending on the operating conditions at each molding pin, these conditions being related to the geometry and to the configuration of the insulative block provided with its passageways, imperfect degradation of the members attached to one or more molding pins leading to damage to one or more passageways on releasing the insulative block concerned. The insulative blocks featuring any such defects then have to be rejected with no possibility of recovering them.
An object of the present invention is to remedy all of the previously mentioned disadvantages by providing an electrical contact for multicontact connectors featuring a retention system whereby the electrical contact is retained essentially by friction rather than by wedging.
Another object of the invention is to provide a multicontact electrical connector in which, because of specific features of the system for retaining each contact, the diameter of the passageway for each electrical contact is at most substantially equal to the overall transverse dimension or diameter of the contact body, which makes it possible to increase the density of the contacts for a type of connector with fixed dimensions.
Another object of the invention is to procure, through the specific structure of the retention system, a very great simplification in the method of producing a connector comprising such contacts, the phase in which parts attached to the molding pins have to be degraded being eliminated or made relatively minor.